Party supplies brand Bonjour Fête is making a marketing push and increasing its product distribution with a line at Target after the L.A. wildfires destroyed its store, six figures worth of inventory and terminated the revenue channel that drove 30% of its business.
Bonjour Fête is saying hello to Target.
The party supplies brand made its debut in 824 Target stores and Target.com on April 20 with a 17 SKU graduation party line.
Founder and CEO Rachel Huntington said being at Target and reaching a mass consumer audience at physical stores is a dream come true.
“The logistics of a nationwide Target launch with a small, mom-and-pop-owned team is a big mountain to climb,” Huntington said. “We’re happy we made it there on shelf on time.”
The Target launch also is keeping the brand in a growth pattern after the January wildfires in L.A. destroyed its store.
Bonjour Fête brand history: From debut to Target launch
Bonjour Fête launched in 2015 with a physical store in Pacific Palisades, California, featuring a curated selection of “design-forward” party supplies that Huntington sourced from Etsy sellers and other suppliers from Europe and Australia.
Using insights she heard from customers, Huntington launched the brand’s own line of party supplies in October 2023 to complement her assortment.
“If you’re only shopping online, you’re seeing what those sales are as they come through. But when you’re shopping in person, you’re hearing about things that people can’t find or that they’re looking for,” Huntington said. “[The store] really was a great touch point to us taking all those conversations and feedback from our customers and making stuff that they wanted.”
After that initial test of seven SKUs, it launched more products in March 2024. Today, about 40% of Bonjour Fête’s business is from its own products.
Although the brand had a website, it wasn’t until the COIVD-19 pandemic that the brand made it shoppable. With the party supply category, the brand didn’t find the time investment in ecommerce worth it until the pandemic shuttered its store.
“It’s a lot of little things and you spend just as much effort doing one product description or one product page for something that’s $4 that you would a dress that’s $250,” Huntington said.
With its own branded products, in July 2024 Bonjour Fête started wholesaling its products and launched on Amazon.com. This was done minimally, Huntington said, as its main focus was its own store.
Then, Target emailed the brand inquiring about working together, which is how the graduation line initiated. Depending on the success of this line, Bonjour Fête could have more products in Target in the future, but Huntington declined to comment further.
Wildfires destroy Bonjour Fête’s store
Fortunately, Bonjour Fête shipped Target’s inventory directly to the mass merchant’s distribution centers, and the products were not impacted from the wildfire that destroyed Bonjour Fête’s store in January.
The physical store was the cornerstone to its business, as it provided the venue for its product pictures and marketing content. As a premium party supplies store in L.A. county, many of its shoppers were celebrities, who would post pictures from shopping trips or their own parties. This provided a stream of organic marketing with above-average reach, Huntington said.
Because the store was so core to its business, the loss was much greater when the wildfire swept through the Palisades, devastating the community. Before the fire, it had just stocked the store for Valentine’s Day. The fire destroyed roughly six figures worth of inventory and immediately terminated the revenue channel that drove 30% of its business. It now takes its pictures in a studio, its warehouse or relies on influencers.
Although its store did not physically burn down, it suffered permanent damage. Bonjour Fête plans to reopen this store, which could take years. Luckily, most of the brand’s inventory was in its warehouse in Utah, which is helping to fuel sales today.
Bonjour Fête diversifies channels, makes marketing push
After suffering this loss, Huntington doubled down on all of its other selling channels, including its own website, Amazon and wholesale. It now sells its products via online wholesale marketplace Faire, which allows its products to be on the shelves at other party boutiques. It also increased the number of SKUs on Amazon, which is now more than 100 products.
Previously, Bonjour Fête relied on word-of-mouth marketing. This channel is typically stronger for parties, as an event draws dozens of people who see and use the product in a social environment.
“Our organic growth and our sell through, we are doing really well,” Huntington said. “We were selling through everything we could possibly order or buy or produce. We didn’t need to quite turn those other channels on.”
But the fire changed everything. Now it’s investing marketing dollars to help drive traffic to its website, such as Google ads. It would buy social media ads, but a few years ago hackers took over its Facebook account and the brand has not been able to get it back.
It also has a few hundred thousand customers on its email marketing list, which it sends messages to twice a week through its email service provider Klaviyo.
“I wish I had collected email addresses earlier on, but really COVID kind of threw me into that place of, oh, every customer that walks in the door, I need to be able to find them, and collecting email addresses,’” she said. “So now we’re very conscious about trying to grow that owned audience as much as possible.”
Growing again
Since the fire, its online sales have increased 75%. Plus, wholesale revenue has increased 100% since March 2024.
Huntington attributes these increases to strategic product category optimization, consistent SEO efforts and its Google ads. It still has several marketing channels that it plans to tap into once it has more inventory and employee resources.
“Looking ahead, we’re forecasting 100% year-over-year growth by doubling down on what’s working and refining our inventory management to support scale,” Huntington said.
And the Target line could be key to this growth. The brand is letting its customers know about it via its email channel and Instagram. It is not putting any paid spend behind the line, as it is trying to be budget conscious.
Bonjour Fête plans to open more physical stores in the future.
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